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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Gods',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'Written in <span title="Introduction to Philosophy">PHIL 1402</span> by <a href="https://y.st./">Alex Yst</a>, finalised on 2018-07-11',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2018',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<p>
	Before we carry on, I should mention who Yahweh is.
	These days, most Christians call their god simply &quot;God&quot;, as if that&apos;s his name.
	&quot;God&quot; isn&apos;t a name though.
	It&apos;s a statement of what he is.
	For example, calling your god &quot;God&quot; instead of his actual name is like calling your pet cat &quot;Cat&quot;.
	Sure, you can do it.
	I&apos;ve called pets by their species instead of their name.
	But in formal contexts, we should certainly call him by his actual name.
	And he has several.
	One of the common ones is Yahweh.
	Another is Jehovah.
	I&apos;m not sure it matters which name we use, as long as we pick one and use it.
	Simply referring to this being as &quot;God&quot; is stupid, and I won&apos;t do it in this essay.
	Any use of the word &quot;god&quot; in this essay is generic, and doesn&apos;t refer to any specific god.
	That is to say, it doesn&apos;t refer specifically to the god of the Christian faith.
</p>
<h2>How can we have Free Will if Yahweh knows everything that has or will happen, and therefore it has already happened or couldn&apos;t be known?</h2>
<p>
	There are a couple possibilities.
	The fist option is that Yahweh has knowledge of what will come because he knows us well enough to calculate what decisions we&apos;ll make, but we still technically will make the known choices.
	We <strong>*could*</strong> choose different options, but we won&apos;t.
	Some people may say that&apos;s logically inconsistent though.
	I find it difficult to explain how free will could exist when I don&apos;t in fact believe free will could possibly exist, with or without a god being there to know everything beforehand.
	Free will itself doesn&apos;t make scientific sense, after all.
	However, there is another explanation.
</p>
<p>
	Perhaps this is the second time around.
	Perhaps we <strong>*already*</strong> made our choices, from Yahweh&apos;s perspective.
	The first time it happened, Yahweh didn&apos;t know.
	It hadn&apos;t happened yet and we had free will.
	Now, history is replaying.
	We don&apos;t remember any of it, but at this point, we don&apos;t technically have free will any more.
	We already made our decisions, and now we&apos;re just reliving them.
	Yahweh, on the other hand, has already experienced it all and knows what will happen this time.
	In other words, Yahweh knows everything that will happen.
	Or perhaps Yahweh doesn&apos;t know everything yet because this is the first time around and we&apos;re still making or decisions.
	He&apos;ll know next time though.
	To put it simply, we have free will and Yahweh knows the future, but the two don&apos;t happen at the same time.
	The two occurring simultaneously would be logically inconsistent.
</p>
<p>
	Various alternate explanations based on this second explanation could be the case as well.
	For example, maybe everything is only happening once, but Yahweh experiences time differently than us and, again, it&apos;s already happened from his perspective.
	While simpler than the second explanation proper, these variants suffer from the same pitfalls as the first explanation.
</p>
<h2>How does a purely good god allow evil to happen to good people?</h2>
<p>
	It&apos;s worth noting that Yahweh, the Christian god that most people seem to think is simply named &quot;God&quot;, cannot be labelled as purely good.
	You can see countless cases of this omnipotent and omniscient god failing immensely at doing the right thing.
	For starters, there&apos;s the fact that he set all the pieces.
	Everything was designed to behave a certain way.
	With Yahweh being omniscient (all-knowing), he knew his designs would turn out how they did.
	He created Adam and Eve in such a way that he <strong>*knew*</strong> they would commit the original sin.
	His design could lead nowhere else.
	He <strong>*designed*</strong> them to commit this sin, then punished them for it!
	Now, for a moment, let&apos;s pretend randomness allows for free will on a level that Yahweh can&apos;t predict.
	This takes away Yahweh&apos;s omniscience, so he didn&apos;t specifically design Adam and Eve to be flawed.
	He still punishes all future generations for the sin of Adam and Eve!
	This isn&apos;t good or just.
	And then there&apos;s the fact that he condemns non-believers, while not actually providing any evidence he exists.
	It&apos;s not good or just to ask someone to believe something without proof, then punish them if they don&apos;t believe.
	I could go on and on about the injustices committed by this &quot;perfectly good&quot; being, but I think these three issues right here are the best examples of it.
	The point is, if we&apos;re discussing a perfectly good god, we&apos;re <strong>*not*</strong> discussing the Christian god, so when discussing why a perfectly good god would do anything, we need to throw all assumptions we draw from assuming that god is Yahweh right out the window.
	From what the Christian bible tells us of Yahweh&apos;s behaviour, he&apos;s proven time and time again that he is a wicked god.
</p>
<p>
	Let&apos;s consult Occam&apos;s razor.
	The simplest solution tends to be the correct one.
	A purely good god isn&apos;t necessarily omnipotent or omniscient.
	Perhaps this hypothetical purely-good god can&apos;t keep track of everything going on on the planet and stop all evil from occurring.
	Perhaps this god <strong>*does*</strong> know about most or even all evil, and works day and night to prevent as much as they can, but simply doesn&apos;t have the energy to do everything.
	Perhaps this god has limitations.
	In fact, a lack of limitations would be a logical inconsistency.
	For example, could an all-powerful god create a stone so heavy that even that same all-powerful god can&apos;t move it?
	If the answer is no, then we&apos;ve found something the god can&apos;t do: create a stone with this property.
	If the answer is yes, then we&apos;ve also found something the god can&apos;t do: move unmovably-heavy stones.
	Given this, we know for a fact that if a god exists, they have limitations in one way or another.
	The only question then is how much the god is limited.
	Perhaps the only limitation is that they can&apos;t limit themself further or create logical inconsistencies.
	For example, they can&apos;t create something that they can&apos;t act upon, because they can always act upon any object in the way that they choose.
	They furthermore can&apos;t create a stick that isn&apos;t as long as itself.
	This would likely be how people perceive Yahweh&apos;s power: capable of doing anything that would actually need to be done to save the world and more.
	However, perhaps the limitations are more severe.
	Perhaps if a purely-good god exists, they have time and energy limitations as well that prevent them from correcting all the wrongs of the world.
	After all, there are so many wrongs to be corrected.
	It&apos;s amazing we haven&apos;t completely left the planet uninhabitable by now, and perhaps that&apos;s because a god is working around the clock to repair some of what we humans keep breaking.
</p>
<p>
	The reading material for the week (Beebe, n.d.) tells us that Plantinga suggests that perhaps the good of having free will outweighs the evil caused by those that have it.
	However, all events are triggered by what came before.
	We are what we were created to be.
	All choices we&apos;d ever make were decided when we were created.
	That means that if a god created us such that we&apos;d choose to cause evil, that god is either not omniscient, not omnipotent, or not entirely good.
	The material also proposes the concept of libertarianism, which is that choices made aren&apos;t predisposed based on prior events (Beebe, n.d.).
	This concept violates the idea of cause and effect though, and is thus scientifically invalid.
	While the existence of a god or gods is not inconsistent with science, libertarianism most certainly is.
	Furthermore, Plantinga claims that Yahweh allows natural disasters, famine, disease, et cetera to exist as punishment for Adam and Eve&apos;s sin.
	Adam and Eve are no longer with us though.
	The people being punished aren&apos;t the people that committed the sin!
	If it were truly the case that Yahweh could not be a just god, as he&apos;s punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.
	Again, if we&apos;re looking at a truly just and purely good god, we&apos;re not looking at the Christian god, Yahweh.
	Plantinga&apos;s ideas do not apply to a purely good god.
</p>
<p>
	Plantinga also tries to explain to us the limitations they think Yahweh has.
	Of particular note, Plantinga says Yahweh <strong>*cannot be unjust*</strong>.
	As we read this week, partial free will isn&apos;t enough to be worthy of praise and admiration.
	If someone is <strong>*physically incapable*</strong> of committing evil, that person doesn&apos;t have morally-significant free will.
	According to Plantinga, Yahweh doesn&apos;t have this morally-significant free will!
	That means that Plantinga&apos;s version of Yahweh is <strong>*not*</strong> worthy of our praise, admiration, and warship.
	If Yahweh simply <strong>*chose not to*</strong> commit evil, it&apos;d be entirely different, but that&apos;s not what Plantinga tells us.
	I also have to wonder about other items on the list.
	If Yahweh is not able to lie, cheat, or steal, why would he create <strong>*us*</strong> in such a way that we <strong>*can*</strong>?
	Again, this would be Yahweh giving us the morally-significant free will that he himself for some reason lacks.
</p>
<p>
	John Hick has a much more reasonable theory.
	He proposes that Yahweh is indeed all-powerful, all-knowing, and supremely good, but that evolution must take place in a rather natural way (Beebe, n.d.).
	Life then, is about the trials and suffering brought about by evil are a necessary part of how we shape our characters and our souls.
	Of course, by this logic, it&apos;s difficult to explain why some people are born subjected to poverty while others are born into a wealthy, upper class with incredibly posh lives.
	Are the rich being denied the character-shaping and soul-building effects of suffering?
	Eleonore Stump continues Hick&apos;s line of though, saying that a life of hardships tends to humble people, with humility being a characteristic valued by Yahweh.
	Again though, the wealthy lack these humbling experiences and often think themselves better than everyone else.
	What would a just god&apos;s purpose be in denying the rich the same vital hardships required for building characters and souls?
	Hick&apos;s and Stump&apos;s theories, while better that Plantinga&apos;s alone, still have holes in them.
</p>
<h2>Although a humanist, Paine believed in a god and the afterlife.</h2>
<p>
	Humanism is the concept that we ourselves shape our destiny.
	The idea is that no god or gods determines what we&apos;ll do with our lives.
	This concept is completely compatible with the idea of a god, such as Yahweh.
	Obviously, no humanist thinks that we choose to bring ourselves into existence.
	Something has to create you.
	If you&apos;re a theist, you probably think a god or gods created you.
	If you&apos;re an atheist, you probably think your parents created you.
	I know I certainly do.
	In either case, you begin shaping your destiny <strong>*after*</strong> your creation.
	If a god created you and left you to shape your own destiny, you&apos;d have a world in which humanism is correct and a god or gods still exist.
	As for an afterlife, the afterlife may or may not have the same freedom in the current life.
	Humanism applies to this life, not the next.
	Furthermore, we may very well have just as much capability of shaping our futures in an afterlife as we do in this life.
	Additionally, it&apos;s worth noting that humanism claims values, including religious values, are an important part of culture (American Humanist Association, n.d.).
	Humanism doesn&apos;t denounce religion at all!
	All it denounces is the previously-perceived helplessness of the human condition.
</p>
<p>
	It&apos;s also worth noting that humanism is completely compatible with determinism too.
	Determinism tells us that all choices we make are already predetermined.
	Humanism tells us that the decisions we make determine our destinies, and to lead good lives, we need to make good choices.
	If both are true, that means that while our futures are determined because our choices are predetermined, our futures are still shaped by our own actions, not the intervention of deities.
	The future may be set in stone, but it&apos;s set the way it is because of who we are and how we choose to act.
</p>
<p>
	While humanism doesn&apos;t denounce religion, it does reject supernatural views of the world.
	What you see is what you know.
	Anything else is acknowledged as mere speculation.
	You&apos;ve got to act based on this world, not some next world that may or may not even exist.
	That doesn&apos;t mean you can&apos;t believe in a next world, it only means that you shouldn&apos;t waste your life planning for some other world you have no proof of.
	You do have proof of the world you&apos;re in now, so that&apos;s the world that&apos;s most important.
	Humanism is based in the world of science, after all, not myth and legend.
</p>
<p>
	Now that I&apos;ve shared my thoughts, let&apos;s get back to Paine.
	We didn&apos;t actually cover Paine this week though, so I&apos;m unsure why he was brought up as part of the assignment this essay is a response to.
	The only reference we have to Paine is that they held out hope for an afterlife, and also that <q cite="https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/">Paine believed in a deistic God who established the laws of nature but then stepped away and never intervenes in the world</q>.
	In other words, Paine believed that a deity created us, but then left and doesn&apos;t interfere with our lives.
	Sure, we were still created according to Paine, but because that deity doesn&apos;t control our lives for us, we&apos;re free now to forge our own destinies.
	We may not have been free in the past, but in the present day, no god has a plan for us.
	We do as we choose and create our own future.
</p>
<h2>So why study these things?</h2>
<p>
	The fact is that, even without any evidence to back up theistic claims, people will continue to follow religion for centuries to come.
	It&apos;s very likely they&apos;ll continue believing such things until our species finally dies out.
	Studying these topics, then, hopefully has one of two effects on us, both of which are good.
	The first is that we might abandon religion.
	Sure, as a race, we&apos;ll keep believing, but as individuals, some of us don&apos;t.
	The second option, which is arguably just is good, is that we&apos;ll at least rule out the most nonsensical parts of religion and instead carry on only the parts that are logically consistent.
	Religion doesn&apos;t have to be wild tales of things that don&apos;t actually make any sense when you think about them.
	Religion can in fact rest within the confines of the possible, maybe even the plausible.
</p>
<div class="APA_references">
	<h2>References:</h2>
	<p>
		American Humanist Association. (n.d.). Definition of Humanism - American Humanist Association. Retrieved from <a href="https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/"><code>https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Beebe, J. R. (n.d.). Logical Problem of Evil | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-log/"><code>https://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-log/</code></a>
	</p>
</div>
END
);
